You’re No Saint, Nick (Festive and F*cked #2)

Chapter 1

Nikki

The snow blankets everything outside the window, falling in soft drifts through the dark blue sky.

Part of me wants to strip off all the layers I had to put on to go out and brave this weather and dive back into my bed.

I'm halfway through a book that I would much rather get back to, but Earlier-Nikki made plans to be social. Current-Nikki hates that bitch.

"I'm just so glad you're going to get out with some kids your own age," Mom says from behind the refrigerator.

I choose to ignore the fact that she called me a kid.

I haven't been a 'kid' since before I grew up, but we don't talk about that.

"After everything last year, you've been so isolated.

It's not good for you to be so cooped up all the time! "

She emerges from behind the refrigerator at last, brandishing the carton of eggnog with a proud grin. I know she means well.

She always means well.

A year ago, she wouldn't have let me leave the house two days before Christmas, begging me to stay and help wrap gifts for the younger kids.

She'd tell me that going out so late with the roads covered in snow was a recipe for disaster, that she would worry about me all night if I went out, and then she'd begin crying because she's just so scared to lose me, and I'd relent.

It happened a few times, my attempts at teenage rebellion always vanquished by the love for my mother; I never wanted to cause her so much worry.

But I'm not a teenager anymore, and now that I want to stay in, she is so desperate to push me out. Not out of her house, maybe, but out into the world.

It's been 375 days since Noah blew his brains out in the church without so much as telling me goodbye.

He didn't give me the faintest clue that anything was ever wrong, so when he dropped me off at home that evening and kissed my forehead, I never imagined that was the last I'd see him.

.. alive, at least. I did see his body shortly after, and his casket a few days later, in the same church where he chose to end his life.

But he was gone. Everything that made him him didn't exist anymore.

When all I can offer for mom is a small smile, which falls quickly from my lips, she sighs. "Just try and have fun, okay, sweetie? You deserve that."

I still haven't come up with anything to say by the time the doorbell rings, sparing me from coming up with a response to that.

Moxie starts barking and runs to the door, prepared to defend us with all eight pounds of her bodyweight, half of which is surely fur, and the house erupts into chaos as Tommy and Jimmy race each other down the stairs.

"He's here!" Mom says excitedly, rushing out of the kitchen so fast that she forgot to set the eggnog down.

Cici stares at me from where she sits in her highchair, chin stained with pasta sauce and wide eyes straining to see what all the commotion is.

"Yeah." I tell her, scooping her up from her chair and running a dish cloth below the water. "I don't know what all the fuss is about, either."

Mom walks back in with Nick in tow as I'm wiping Cici's chin and prying the last piece of emotional support pasta from her sticky fist so I can clean that too.

"Look who's here." Mom says, as if she didn't know that Nick was coming to pick me up tonight. "And he brought flowers? Isn't that so sweet of him?"

I glance up to see the poinsettia in her hands, the bright red leaves that are a stark contrast to her cream-colored sweater. I don't know how poinsettias came to be associated with Christmas, but I don't quite care. They're hideous.

"It's actually a plant." I tell mom. "It hasn't flowered yet. And the leaves are toxic to dogs, so make sure to keep it out of Moxie's reach."

"Of course." Mom waves away my concerns and sets her new plant down, sweeping Cici into her arms with an exaggerated smile as Nick sets the eggnog down on the counter and grins.

"You look good, Nicolette," Nick says, pulling out my full name, undoubtedly for mom's benefit. She falls for it, hook line and sinker, preening as he moves closer to me, chuckling. "Really good."

Unlike me, Nick moved on after one of our best friends died.

He went back to his college and put this town in the rearview mirror and told me to basically get over it, to move on.

I think I'm finally ready to move on, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

.. the whole reason I relented when Nick popped into my DM's and asked me about going out tonight.

We grew up together, Nick and I. Our mothers were best friends, both of us with absent fathers who never were around much, and our mothers used to love to take us out and about and tell people we were twins.

Nick and Nikki.

So cute, so cheesy, so fucking desperate for attention.

Nick and I started drifting apart long before he introduced me to Noah, but we shared so much together that I expected more from him in Noah's absence.

Instead, I got a happy birthday text message and then an invitation to a private memorial tonight.

I haven't forgiven Nick for abandoning me, but my love for Noah overshadows it enough that I agreed to go out tonight.

"You've always been such a sweet boy, Nicholas." Mom says as the boys come running in, chasing Moxie, who jumps at my legs. I bend down to scratch her behind the ears, hiding my face, which typically shows exactly what I'm thinking. "Your mother would be so proud of you."

I decide to bite my tongue instead of telling mom that Nick's not actually the nice guy he's pretending to be. Unless he's changed this past year, which I highly doubt considering he's been radio silent, he's not that special. But he's always had everyone fooled... even, at one point, me.

"Ready to go?" I ask him, brushing past without waiting for an answer. Every second I stand here with my mom fawning over him, I lose my resolve to go.

But tonight isn't about me; it's about the man I loved. My best friend. The one who never left me hanging.

Nick doesn't hesitate; from the corner of my eye, I see him wave goodbye to my mom as he follows me to the front door.

"Stay out of my room." I remind the boys, giving them 'mom-eyes' so that they know to take me seriously. I haven't been the best role model for them the past year, but they grew up treating me like a second mother. I basically became one when my dad died.

"Have fun, sweetie!" Mom calls as I open the door, glancing back to wave her off. It's not exactly a 'fun' sort of scenario, but I guess I didn't tell her that. I just told her I was going out with Nick for a bit.

She uses a grip on Cici's tiny wrist to make her wave to me, and I can't fight it this time. I smile, already looking forward to coming back home and kissing her chubby cheeks.

Finding out that mom was pregnant at her age was a shock, not just because I'm newly-twenty, but because my dad has been dead for six years.

I didn't know she was seeing anyone because apparently, she wasn't. It was completely casual, she explained, and the father wouldn't be involved.

I still don't know who my sister's father is, and I don't expect I ever will, unless she one day decides to hunt him down.

Mom claims he was just passing through, but we're not exactly a tourist location.

Church and Lakes, North Carolina isn't a place you go for fun. I mean, just say that name again.

Church and Lakes. Not only is it stupid, it's literal.

There's not much in this town besides, you guessed it, churches and lakes. During the summer, the lakes can be a nice destination for picnics or afternoon strolls, but they're nothing anyone is driving here just to see. During the winter, though, I suppose there's a certain draw.

Being a religious town, they tend to take Christmas pretty seriously.

It's beautiful, I suppose. Everyone in my neighborhood dresses their house in lights and wreaths and lawn ornaments and life-size nativity scenes that are actually really fucking creepy when you look out the window at three a.m. and think you're seeing someone standing in your neighbor's yard watching you.

Even the people who tend to avoid church the majority of the year show up for Christmas Mass at one of the five churches in town, and everything else closes to allow for observance of the holiday.

Literally, everything. If you have an emergency, you've got to drive thirty miles to the next nearest ER.

Now that I'm older, and no longer someone who attends church every single Sunday, I realize it's a bit culty, but I'd never tell that to my mom.

Nick, however, isn't free from me telling him how I feel about it all. Luckily, he seems to understand. His father's a preacher at the smallest church in town, and he was fully indoctrinated from birth. Once we were old enough to think for ourselves, he became pretty cynical of it all.

I slink into the passenger seat and wait for him to turn the car on before leaning forward to turn the heat up to the max.

"Really?" He teases, tossing his scarf onto the center console and stripping his gloves off by the fingers.

"You know I hate the cold." I remind him, crossing my arms for the little bit of heat it will provide me until the car gets toasty enough.

"I remember," he chuckles, tapping a button in between our seats. "Seat warmers." He explains with a soft smirk.

I relax into the warmth, feeling immediately better about going out tonight. Maybe it won't be that bad, after all.

Nick and I were best friends for years; surely I can make it through the car ride with him. It's just ten minutes to his father's church— the one where Noah killed himself.

As much as I'm dreading being back there again, a small part of me is actually looking forward to seeing the friends I haven't talked to in nearly a year.

"I've missed you, Nikki," Nick says. When I look at him, there's an easy grin on his lips, and he looks so much like the kid he used to be that I can almost feel my defenses failing.

The truth is I've missed him too. I lost my boyfriend and all of our other friends at the same time.

The truth is, he was the only one who stayed with me when they all left for schools in other parts of the country or towns far away.

But it's not their fault that they moved on.

That's what we're supposed to do, right?

Grow up and start families of our own, create our own futures, independent of where we came from.

It's what Noah and I planned to do, even though I couldn't possibly move away and leave my mom to juggle all the kids herself.

When I told him on graduation day that I wasn't going anywhere, that I couldn't follow through on my acceptance to Penn State because it was too far, he decided to stay too.

He told me I was his future, and he was mine, but now he's gone.

And he took it from me.

Anger has been just as potent as grief this last year, and I'm not even sure I've forgiven him yet for the choice he made.

In a way, I guess he moved on too.

I'm the only one who's still stuck here, hoping for something more.

"Oh," Nick glances behind him, looking into the back seat, and the car begins to swerve into the next lane.

"Nick!" I warn, fear gripping me as headlights appear on the hill, headed straight toward us.

The other car blares its horn, knowing there's nowhere to go out here; the guardrail is all that separates the left lane from the rocks below. They'll run right through us because trying to stop isn't an option if there's ice on the road.

I act fast, grabbing the steering wheel that he abandoned to reach behind him, praying that we don't hit a patch of black ice.

I spin the wheel, careful not to overcorrect and end up leveling us back into our own lane seconds before a pickup-truck whizzes past us in the other lane.

"Sorry," Nick chuckles, grabbing hold of the steering wheel again and grinning like he didn't just almost kill us both.

Fucking psychopath.

The adrenaline surge makes it hard to find words to yell at him or call him stupid or anything. In fact, I don't know if it's shock or my body remembering I'm alive, but the sudden rush through my veins makes me feel light, and before I even realize it, I'm laughing.

I know it makes no sense, and I really shouldn't be laughing at the fact that we were inches from death, but I can't help it. It just comes out of me, like it's been waiting for this whole last year to finally escape.

When I manage a glance at Nick, he isn't actually watching me with concern; he doesn't seem to be afraid that I've lost my mind. He's grinning too, as amused with our near collision as me.

"My bad." He chuckles. "I guess I should have waited 'til we got to the church, but I didn't want to forget. I got you something."

My laughter curtails as I look at the box he'd set in his lap.

If I hadn't seen him reaching into the backseat, I'd think this was an awful prank, the way the giftwrapped present is positioned.

"Go on," he says. "I don't want to take my hands off the steering wheel again."

The absurdity of that makes the laughter strike again, but this time I tamp it down, reaching cautiously for the box and checking the tag with my name printed on it in perfect block letters.

That, at last, abates my laughter entirely, as my blood runs cold, all the heat from the car suddenly evaporating as we pull into the empty church parking lot.

I know that handwriting.